Médecins du Monde, which has semi-permanent base in migrant camp, says number of people needing urgent help has rocketed in recent days

Medical staff in Calais say they are struggling to cope with the number of seriously injured migrants, who are taking ever greater risks attempting to get to the UK.

As French police confirmed the death of another migrant attempting to cross the Channel, Médecins du Monde, which has a semi-permanent base in “the jungle” migrant camp in Calais, said that the number of people needing urgent help had rocketed in recent days.

President Obama convened a meeting with the leaders of three African nations and the African Union Monday in an effort to address the worsening situation in South Sudan, even as he met with Ethiopia’s prime minister to discuss how to strengthen human rights and democratic institutions ...

President Obama needs to unveil a new foreign policy initiative on Africa during his trip to Kenya and Ethiopia or risk going down in history as the worst president for Africa in recent memory.
It would be a shame if the first American president of African descent ranks last in meaningful engagement with Africa when compared to other presidents in the recent past. Although both George W. Bush and Bill Clinton came under intense criticism for doing nothing in the face of genocide and war crimes, they were able to recover somewhat by launching signature initiatives during their second terms.
During his first term, Bill Clinton pulled out of Somalia in a spectacular debacle immortalized in the Hollywood movie Black Hawk Down and then refused to intervene in Rwanda, standing by as tens of thousands were slain during one of the worst outbursts of fratricidal violence in the 20th century. During his second term, however, Clinton launched a series of health and development initiatives that partially mitigated ...

New York, July 24 : Mid-way through a four-day visit to assess the humanitarian situation in South Sudan, the United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator reviewed aid operations in the warn-torn country today, stressing that "everything" should be done to protect civilians from violence.

US president faces calls to intervene in war-torn country after Human Rights Watch presents new evidence of alleged atrocities

Barack Obama arrives in Kenya this weekend amid calls for the US to take swift action to halt continuing violence in South Sudan, where new evidence emerged on Wednesday of horrific atrocities amounting to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Obama will attend a conference on global entrepreneurship in Nairobi, and may visit Nyan’goma Kogello village, the home of his late father. Nairobi residents have complained that $500,000 (£320,000) in taxpayers’ money has been spent sprucing up the capital ahead of his arrival.

New York, Jul 22 : The top United Nations humanitarian official is heading to South Sudan where a new cholera outbreak has claimed nearly 40 lives, more than 2.2 million people have been uprooted from their homes by conflict and nearly 8 million others are expected to face food shortages during the rainy reason.

Appalled by migrant deaths in the Mediterranean, Chris Catrambone bought a boat and launched his own rescue mission. But as he discovered, there are pitfalls to going it alone
In late June 2013, Christopher Catrambone, a garrulous 31-year-old American entrepreneur who had spent almost a decade travelling the world to build a multimillion-dollar company, decided to take a break. Tangiers Group, which Catrambone runs with his Italian wife Regina, provides insurance in conflict zones – to US military subcontractors, NGO workers, journalists and missionaries, among others. The business, rooted in such war-wrecked countries as Iraq and Afghanistan, was flourishing. But that summer, Catrambone decided, the company could take care of itself for three weeks.
Catrambone and Regina, along with Regina’s teenage daughter Maria Luisa, set off from their home on the Mediterranean island of Malta, aboard a glistening white 24-metre chartered motor yacht with Burmese teak decking and varnished Tanganyika walnut joinery. ...

Special Report: Current U.S. foreign policy is driven by neoconservative ideologues and tough-talking “liberal interventionists” who spread chaos and death around the world while failing to serve real American interests. It’s time for a fundamental rethinking, writes former U.S. diplomat William R. Polk. By William R. Polk Judaism, Christianity and Islam have proclaimed that humankind faces…

Report by UN rights investigators accuses Sudan People’s Liberation Army of brutality and widespread abuses in civil war

South Sudan’s army raped then burned girls alive inside their homes during a recent campaign notable for its “new brutality and intensity”, a UN rights report said on Tuesday.

Rights investigators from the UN mission in the Republic of South Sudan (Unmiss) warned of “widespread human rights abuses”, including gang-rape and torture in a report based on 115 victims and eyewitnesses from the northern state of Unity, scene of some of the heaviest recent fighting in the 18-month-long civil war.

New York, Jun 18 : Humanitarian needs are at an all-time high, the top United Nations relief official declared on Wednesday, stressing that while the Organization needs no less than $18.8 billion to meet the needs of nearly 80 million people, it has received only 26 per cent of that amount.

New York, Jun 17 : To tackle the humanitarian impact of the "relentlessly deteriorating" crisis in South Sudan, the European Union and the United Nations on Tuesday announced that more than $275 million has been pledged in support of the victims in the country and the wider region.

Europe must help the desperate refugees from Isaias Afwerki’s regime and other blighted countries
Eritrea is poor, misgoverned, miserable and far away. Many people, if they are honest, are not entirely sure where it is. Such ignorance suits western governments, which have mostly turned a blind eye to its despotic regime, its subversive policies and its appalling, institutionalised human rights abuses. Only when evidence emerges that Eritrea’s one-party state leadership, from President Isaias Afwerki down, has been gun-running into Somalia and South Sudan, supporting Islamist extremists, plotting bomb attacks in Addis Ababa or pursuing money-laundering and extortion does the international community take notice. But attention spans are short and nothing much is done.
Visitors to Eritrea’s capital, Asmara, are kept under close surveillance, especially if they are foreign journalists – a rare occurrence, given the paranoid Afwerki’s abhorrence of free speech and free media. The influence of Italian colonists ...

New York, Jun 13 : Citing efforts to provide humanitarian assistance to children in Sudan who are affected by the war in South Sudan, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) stressed the huge demand and urgency of receiving more financial support to continue its relief work in the Country.

The EU may be saving lives in the Mediterranean but it is turning a blind eye to the political repression in Africa’s worst dictatorship
Europe’s response to the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean has rightly – if belatedly – focused on saving lives. Not a week goes by now without thousands of Africans, Asians and refugees from the Middle East being rescued off the coast of Italy by European ships. That is the welcome result of a humanitarian effort decided in late April, after a series of tragedies at sea had pushed EU leaders to act at last. But it would be dangerous to suppose that the deeper problem has been addressed. Europe deals only with the symptoms of migration, not its root causes. Eritrea is a striking case in point.
This east African nation of 6 million people is now one of the biggest sources of migrants who take the perilous journey into Sudan and then across Libya before finally setting out to sea towards Europe’s shores. There is no civil war in Eritrea, nor has there been an ...

KUAJOK, South SudanIt is difficult to imagine a place more physically and psychologically removed from the world economy, from centers of global influence such as Washington or London, than Warrap state (whose capital is Kuajok).Read full article ...